Futility
by jhalya
Summary: PART 1: Ichigo learns a new word. He doesn't like it.PART 2: Rukia ponders on the meaning of certain words. Farewell Swords and Deathberry returns 2 tribute
1. Part 1

**Futility**

**Ichigo learns a new word. He doesn't like it. Stream of consciousness, Ichigo introspective, post Ch. 423 speculation.**

Sometimes he catches himself doing silly things like talking out loud like the crazy people in the street. In his defense, he only does it at night, wandering around town, leaning against lamp posts and whispering "Hey, Rukia" under his breath. Of course, he never gets an answer, but he can damn well imagine he does. He imagines she's standing real close, her eyes dark pools of moonlight, speckled with just a hint of Karakura yellow neon, her dark robes indistinguishable from his shadow. Yeah, she's standing _that_ close. She's scolding him, he imagines and smiles. She's wasting her breath really, it's not like he can hear her anymore. His smile fades. Not that he'd care if he actually could, mind you, but now he'd do…_anything_… to hear her getting vocal over something he'd assumedly done wrong. Like walking alone in the dead of the night, in just his flimsy tee shirt and light jacket. Doesn't he know he could catch a cold? He'd be miserable. His father would make sure of that. And what about Yuzu then? She'd worry and…and…and…

…and this is how Ichigo learns the true meaning of futility. No matter how hard he tries, his mind can never conjure up Rukia's true voice and her words and the things she never says because her eyes give them away. He's already had a strained relation with helplessness, but right now he feels that futility is a concept he could learn to hate. It doesn't make him happy, it doesn't make him sad, it makes him mad. Stark raving-ly so. Worse than the bout of schizophrenia that having a Hollow alter-ego racking your inner world apart brought upon him. What use is the knowledge that she can see him, if he can't reciprocate…

…Rukia…

He feels lost, misplaced and tired. Above all tired. The kind that seeps into your bones and lingers. Nothing to do, no one to fight, the mountain of people he wanted to protect slowly diminishing into a measly ant hill because his physical _human_ strength can only handle that much and that's a strain.

The night lights of Karakura shine on like fallen stars and yet the darkness upon him seems thicker than ever. He's lost his guiding light. A small ray as it was – short and bossy and always in his face – it trickled steadily from a fragile twinkle to a true sunburst. He feels cast off and deprived. He kicks a stray pebble of the sidewalk in apathy, clenches his fists and sighs. If he were younger, he'd cry for his mother. But this is another type of pain. Another type of loss. A deceiving one. Futility drives a steel knife through his windpipe and he chokes and he sobs and...

…_Rukia…_

His jacket rustles softly, even as he slumps to the ground, defeated by the weight of a few wayward tears. To be reduced to this… he aches with his body. He aches with his soul. And just because he's a champion of denial, that doesn't mean he's made of stone. He's filled to the brim with feelings he doesn't know what to do with, it has always been so. He reads poetry, but he's not a poet. Words don't come as easy as he would like them to. And when they do, he runs the risk of sounding cheesy so he clams up and sucks it in. He wants Rukia back because silence between them is an everlasting dialogue. He wants her back because Rukia taps on all the boxes in his heart and sets things there free, be it for the good or for the bad. He wants her back because you never know what you've got till it's gone and there are so many things he has yet to tell her, to show her, to make her feel. His touch being the least of them.

Pointless to think about that now.

Futile.

He'd have a better chance at grabbing a fistful of air.

Which he does and he can just sit here, under the lamp post, and imagine it's full of her. His jacket feels tighter and he smiles a wan sort of smile.

"This _still_ doesn't make me happy _at all._"

He stares at the patch of midnight nothingness gently clasped in his right hand and heaves a deep breath. Nothing stirs around him.

"What's that you say?"

He rests his head against the cool metal pole and it's cold and his bottom is numb. He tugs himself upwards, all the while _imagining _he's not doing it alone. He shivers and heads home….

"Yeah, maybe I should do something about it."

…where his heart is.

**A/N: After two days of bawling over the new chapter, this thing demanded to come out****, weird and senseless as it is. Hope you liked it, but feel free to review either way! Thanks for reading:)**


	2. Part 2

**DISCLAIMER: _Bleach_ does not belong to me**

**Rukia – on the meaning of certain words. Companion piece to _Futility._  
**

Ichigo has freakishly long legs that can outrun her even when his pacing himself. He also has broad, strong shoulders, fit to accommodate the heaviness of all worlds upon them. And he's so young and foolish it breaks her heart. He cannot say in words what his heart screams in blood, with every pounding beat-beat-beat that she has learned to hate because it only serves to remind her of an age old argument – literally so – that, in view of recent developments concerning his heritage, shouldn't be that much of a big deal. But that doesn't make him any less young and any less green and any less foolishly easy to love, and to miss and to care for.

Funny how priorities seem to change when he's not around to annoy her with his loudness – for he is loud, from the bottom of his outrageously colourful sneakers to the top of his orange hair that becomes him in ways she cannot describe, draw or paint, even with her superior artistic skills. Ichigo's absence is the silence of the grave she doesn't remember or is even sure she had. She gives it a chance, for his sake, not hers, and learns how **futile** resistance is. Ichigo is so like his mother – she will hear _someone_, sometimes, say – the star they all orbit around and, by the gods, how she wishes she's not one of those meteors that crash and burn when they run against his massive power, but a steadily revolving planet, basking in the glory of his warmth. Only when she is deprived of it does she understand its true valor. And its true name. The name of the feeling she had mistakenly attributed to other gods in Rukia Kuchiki's personal pantheon. It is not the love for a most adored brother or the caring feeling she exhibits towards her trusted friend. It is not even that which she still harbours for her beloved mentor.

_No. _It is more vibrant and stronger by a thousand fold. It's not something she can easily hide in the dark corners of her heart for it will only break free, like wild fire through her veins, leaving in its path slowly sizzling rivers of raw, burning emotions that consume her from the inside out even as she tries to temper it with the cold that so easily comes during her strenuous training.

With Ichigo, Rukia has learned the meaning of words like _ardent_ and _incandescent_ or _tempting_ and _love_ and they opened up a whole new world of possibilities that are difficult to suppress.

No matter what.

No matter how much she tries.

Tried.

And forever failed.

And when she sees him, truly sees him, when the curtains of rain and despair finally part to make way for her grand entrance, in his eyes – the most vulnerable part of him, because they are incapable of hiding anything from her, be it madness or the myriad of little lies he feeds to himself on a daily basis like the _boy_ that he really is – she sees all the admission she needs.

Her feet are clean. Her heart is aching, crying out for his, but her hands are steady.

All it takes is a sharp sword, smoothly sliding in his chest, with practiced ease, as if it belongs.

And so, she bravely steps into his soul...

"Yeah...It's been a while."

...where her true home is.

* * *

**A/N: I love Bleach, I love Ichigo and tonight I was reminded of that. This came to be. Thanks for giving it a chance. I hope you enjoyed it…**

…**.**

**Now, REVIEW, please, and make this author happy!**

**Thank you :) **


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